Writers and Editors

Writers and Editors (Pat McNees's blog)

Published 8-14-13, updated 10-13-13
This is a roundup of various pieces on how to price ebooks: Do you price high and count on fewer but more profitable sales, or do you price low to get volume? Do you charge libraries more? Do you offer freebies? Do customers expect low ebook prices? It's a wild world out there in ebook land, and the right price for an ebooks may depend on the size and type of audience a particular book attracts. Study and learn (and guess with the others):

• Pricing Strategies for Ebooks (Mark Coker, Smashwords) "Some authors fixate on price alone, but it’s important to consider price as only one of several factors that influence a reader’s purchase decision. We have many free ebooks that earn few downloads, and many priced books that get more paid downloads than some of the freebies." An overview of the factors that affect pricing success.

• Experimenting with Ebook Pricing (Aaron Patterson, guest posting on The Savvy Book Marketer "This is still a guessing game but all we can do is keep testing and try to find that sweet spot. The trick is to find where we can reach the most people and make the most money all at the same time, and this all comes down to marketing and a little luck."

• Setting an eBook price & Understanding eBook Royalties (Mill City Press). Your price may affect how much you collect from the distributor. Apple pays 70% of the sale price regardless of where the price is set. For most other retailers, including Amazon and Barnes & Noble, the royalties are about 50%.

• The 'Other' E-Book Pricing Problem (Art Brodsky, Huff Post, 7-17-13) "While the e-book world takes a minute to digest the court ruling finding Apple conspired with book publishers to jack up the price of e-books to consumers, it's worth noting that there is another e-book pricing battle going on." Discriminatory pricing. "Some book publishers don't lease e-books to libraries at all, depriving library customers of versions of popular best-sellers. Others set the lease rates exorbitantly high, squeezing the already squeezed library budget."

• Power Pricing: How should I price my eBooks? (Nathan Maharaj, Kobo Writing Life, 12-11-12) His advice: Price deliberately, responsibly, and often. "It helps to remember that “price” should be treated as a verb – it’s an action that we take, rather than a noun we define."

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